Vilify
by Nerumi H
Summary: She has disobeyed, but that was only the first step of her destruction. After all, the halls of justice favour the living. Light Yuuma/android!Gumi.


.title.:** Vilify**

.summary.: **She has disobeyed, but that was only the first step of her destruction. After all, the halls of justice favour the living.**

.characters.:** VY2 Yuuma/Android!Gumi - Megurine Luka - Gakupo Kamui**

.warnings.:** Mentions of abuse.**

.cover art by.:** mog (Pixiv ID: 29872459)**

.a/n.:** Okay. Well. This is kind of completely a spin-off short I did for my Yuuma/Gumi series, Scratched Goggles & Winter Tuques. I just really, really wanted to expand on it! My knowledge of the courtroom isn't extensive, but I did do a little Googling. I do hope you like this~.**

**I'm really asking for constructive criticism on this one. If I could get some, that would be amazing.**

**Lmfao. Last names what.**

**Lyrics are from the song with the title that I took for this fic, by the National.**

**X**

_Exile;_  
_It takes your mind again._  
_Exile;_  
_It takes your mind again._

_Oh, you meant so much_  
_Have you given up?_

_Does it feel like a trial?_

_Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine?_

**X**

She sat prettily in her chair.

Glancing from me to the folder I was rifling through, she was endlessly smiling, endlessly joyful, pleasantly oblivious. Ever since I'd met her, that was the one thing of hers that I wished I had. She never did stop smiling and regarding the world like she had endless things to explore and gain, and they'd all be handed to her without trial. Like she deserved it _all._ I, however, worried too much. I was worrying now.

I had to admit, I didn't like how she'd chosen me for this job. I hadn't been studying law for very long, just enough to know that I was very nearly breaking some by just being here. But still, it had been what she'd insisted, and when I was purchased, I couldn't very easily back out.

I straightened up the papers again and my tie and scratched the back of my neck, murmuring under my breath the whole 'I pledge' commandment because forgetting it would execute me even before they led me to the gallows.

She was trying to make it better by slipping her palm over the nape of my neck. I dropped my hand at her coax while she said with a futile and almost comical attempt at keeping her voice in a whisper, "Don't worry, Roro! If you ask me, you look like you fit in here the most out of all of us." She smirked and still tried to speak through the threatening swells of a grin. "And if you forget, you can always just dazzle them with your smile!"

I pushed my files to the end of the burgundy glazed table. While she spoke, she'd been successful in distracting me from the shuffling and installing of the other people in the courtroom, but now that she stopped, it all swelled up around my ears again. I glanced at her and said as genuinely as I could when so frazzled, "Thanks, Gumi."

"You mean, 'Thank you'! Be professional!" she scolded mockingly, tapping a finger against my jaw. Her flashy green waves fell out of her bun on the side, but I highly doubted she had the attention to care. "Or should you say, 'I humbly accept your, hmm, enriching efforts to quell the pointless anxiety I am victim to. I'm not sure. My vocabulary bank isn't that big."

She was trying to make me feel better, but with that last phrase, she just made everything worse. Around us, the plaintiff's family were sliding into the benches, fixing the side of my head the coldest stares on this planet. I knew one of them would start crying once the victim was brought up. When she would chirp his name in the same way she was singing mine, innocuous and clueless and cheerful and aimlessly swinging a weapon of her words like she often did without knowing it.

I was in court defending the life of a murderer, and all they could call her was a robot.

She'd come to me, shown me the pictures and the story of how she killed him, explaining briefly that he'd tried to hurt her. Put his hands on her that set off alarm bells in her head, and not the literal kind.

If she could fear, I knew she could make mistakes.

Cracking open the head of her creator on the edge of the counter counted as one.

My case was to defend her destruction, while the people she had once called her family were determined to let her burn, because she was no longer an abused child, she was a robot with a wire loose.

But I just gave her a crooked placid smile. She grinned back, teeth straight and perfect, tongue poking out a bit like a young girl.

She _was_ a young girl.

And I wasn't to see her as anything but.

**X**

"My client has demonstrated, to me and to all others who have interacted with her, namely her parents," I fought to level that word so it didn't sound like it had air quotes around it, "that she is capable of feeling guilt, regret, and acting on impulse. She was threatened by the plaintiff's family on various occasions, and as anyone would when faced with a situation of abuse, she aimed to escape it.—"

"The defendant was threatened for what reasons?"

I angled very slightly to face the women a few feet to my right, where she stood with her chin turned up and jaw like marble. I didn't want to grace the other lawyer with my focus. From the corner of my eyes, Gumi flashed another smile.

"For misbehaving," I answered simply, "on trivial things. She was a dedicated daughter, but as perfection was aimed for her, when she could not attain it she was punished. Surely this cannot be deemed to be rightful."

"Perfection was aimed for her, for she was designed to be the embodiment of such a thing. She was _designed_, you see. A creation. There should be no question that she deserves that punishment."

"As every other child, bred to be a perfect doctor or lawyer or athlete, deserves?"

"She is not capable of feeling the profound mental scars that humans suffer when abused, Mr Romiya. Please do not bring those poor children onto the level of a cold machine."

"I'm not cold!"

I inwardly cringed as Gumi piped up with her worthy input. She was turned towards the opposing side, and as the severe-looking wife of her creator grimaced, she elaborated. "I'm actually 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, just like you, Miss."

Everyone was silent for a second until she chirped, "Oh, oops! Permission to speak, your honor?"

The judge gave her a critical look then responded with a terse yes.

"I'm actually 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, just like you, Miss."

As soon as her mouth was closed again, I jumped back to the field, as if speaking loudly enough after her would sweep away the remnants of that outburst from everyone's memories. I'd told her to not speak unless spoken to. I really hoped she wouldn't remember that, and then apologize for it, right in front of everyone.

"If she is seen as a machine to the family, as you refer to, Miss Megurine, then why would they feel the need to reprimand her for misbehaving? Do you give your pocket watch a time-out when it refuses to tell the hour?"

By the pinch of her face, I didn't think I was too off in assuming that she punished everything that didn't follow right in line of her. I angled myself more towards her, smothering down the quirking of an eyebrow. Her light hair was cut bluntly at the bottom, scraped into a painful-looking ponytail from her face. Her blue eyes narrowed.

I continued in lieu of her silence. "It is clear that Mr Kamui thought of my client as more than an object. He believed she had coherent thought, which is true. There is proof of which in everything she has done to date, including the crime in question. Coherent thought therefore places her on the same level as us—human beings. To be specific," I looked back at her, extending a hand to the small form of her that sat there, "a girl of seventeen years, a prisoner in her own home, punished, abused, and fully capable of suffering of retaliating. If a girl, born like the rest of us had been, came to your courtroom, being accused of cold blooded murder when all she had done was defend herself against a criminal who was threatening her life, would you support the execution of her?"

After that, I felt a swell of pride, making me stare her levelly in the eyes with mine and wait for her reply. Surely, I'd stopped her there. Gumi seemed to think so too, as I saw her legs begin to swing back and forth in her chair and she shot me a subtle thumbs-up.

However, I was wrong. The woman before us merely offered me a callous smile before twisting on the ball of her foot and facing me fully. "You seem very determined to have her convicted as a human. Would you like this case to turn to whether or not her crime can be justified by circumstance or whether she is fully to blame for her actions?"

I only stared at her. She knew that's exactly what I was trying to do from the beginning, but I could tell by her haughty expression that she had something else in mind. She folded her hands at the lower part of her back, and came to a pause by the edge of Gumi's family's table. She said, "If I may request that Miss Gumi please stand up?"

I was going to tell her not to but Gumi was up on her feet before I could even take a breath, the chair sliding back noisily. She adjusted her black dress, one she'd quickly tugged me off to buy for her before the trial, acting as excited with the prospect of new (free) clothing as any other girl. She'd taken too much time in the dressing rooms and ran around in bare feet and told a timid-looking stout girl peeking out her change room door, that she looked absolutely adorable, but may she suggest a necklace to balance it? When I'd seen her like that, I had found myself wondering how anyone could call her anything else but real. The only thing that set us apart was her bright hair and unrealistically vibrant eyes, and occasionally her matter of speaking, but nothing else.

That girl was also not a murderer.

She smiled openly at the Megurine woman, but not without a small twinge of a frown when those azure irises skidded to see her old family. They wanted her dead and I know she understood that.

The woman proceeded to announce, "Even if she could comprehend it, there is no evidence of an abusive situation, as Gumi's synthetic construction doesn't allow her to chafe or bruise. I am sure Mr Roriya must have acknowledged this before attempting to convince us of her, ah, human error."

Gumi's smile completely vanished.

"My client is adamant with the fact that Gumi was never harmed in any criminal way when in housing with the Kamui family. Unless one of the defendant's fabricated tales can be proven, she is simply a murderer of cold blood, and that is all there is to say on the matter."

Gumi blurted, her voice small and wispy, "You think I'm lying?"

The opposing lawyer gave her a diminutive look, while I was simply silent. The judge sat up straighter, now, that the words between us had quelled and he may actually get a few questions in.

"I believe Mr Roriya and his client have, yes, given this fictitious tale to defend the case's behaviour that is simply the result of a glitch in her system. As all good defendant's do, may I add."

I was horrified to see Gumi staring at the woman like that, so blank and scared. I'd never seen her like that, but surely, seeing her terror must enforce to the judge that she was real, she did...she did _feel._ I almost wanted her to do something, lash, just to prove my point, the point that would save her—even though that would surely backfire.

My words were seeped out of me, as quickly as if my textbook of intelligence ended right here, in this second. Kamui's wife glimpsed up at Gumi and was met with the girl's delicately broken expression.

The older woman blinked and I swore she cringed before looking away, then pulling herself up in her chair to tap her lawyer on the wrist. Megurine whipped back to see her, and with a bare communication of mute words, the woman was back at the judge and requesting a recess.

It was granted.

Immediately I was at Gumi's side, thoughtless but to the way she was quivering the slightest bit in her fists and broad, slanted shoulders. Her pink lips were mashed together in an especially tremulous pout.

"Sit," I ordered shortly, keeping my voice soft for her as the jury was beginning to stir and lowly discuss. I didn't want to dare look back behind me to the table where the Kamui's sat, for I knew that whatever I saw would upset me further. I suppose it was pointless to think that. Upset me; that was their _point_. What was irritating me was how easily they'd done it.

Gumi lowered herself carefully into her wooden chair and I sat beside her. Leaning forwards with my elbows on my knees, my head was lowered so she could look down at me, and I noticed her eyes were flicking back and forth across my face, eye-to-eye, her black lashes fluttering with the movement and the way she batted away her stress.

She whispered shakily, "I'm not lying, Yuuma. I wouldn't lie."

"I know," I soothed her to the best of my ability. I slid my hand over hers that sat in her lap. She wasn't cold, as she'd said, her shallow palm porcelain smooth and fingers fragile. It was strange to think when we'd first met, they'd been knotted with clotted blood and, if she could cry, surely the slippery tracks of fresh tears.

"Why would I hurt Mrs Kamui? I really liked her, you know, I did. I didn't want to make her mad at me." Gumi stared at me for a long, flat second, in which her expression blurred then focused back on me, back on disaster. "I didn't think she'd be so upset."

Coming from anyone else, I would be appalled at that—_you killed her husband,_ of course she's angry and offended and horrified and wants to get you out of the world forever. But from her...I immediately decided she was less of a teenager and more of a child. Learning slowly every day, discovering, and slipping up in a body she didn't know the capabilities of.

I wasn't sure how to explain humility in a court case, though. I couldn't win them over by making them watch her cry.

And I didn't want that, I really didn't.

"We'll fix this," I said. And I carved a smile onto my face, making sure she saw it. "It'll be fine after this, okay?"

She could only give me a dim flicker of her usual grin. "If you say so."

"I know so."

It opened up a slight bit more. "You know a lot, don't you?"

"I have my strengths." A few rustles caught my attention and I risked a glance to the opposing table. Mrs Kamui was standing, shaking out her arms and her stresses from where she sat rigidly in her seat. She pressed her palms into her eyes, no mind to her mute makeup, and her chest swelled with a heaving inhale.

And then her stance shuddered and her hands pressed further, but they couldn't dispel the warped gouging of her lips as she wracked with a sob.

I noticed Gumi was staring with me.

"Can I talk to her?" Gumi asked.

Practice and theory taught me that that was almost always an enormous misstep, to let the two opposing parties speak, but somehow here I knew it wouldn't cause too much of a problem. We watched for a second more as the woman could no longer hold herself strongly on her feet, and sunk to her chair again, blind to the eyes of a terse Megurine and the audience of jury.

"Yeah."

I lightly squeezed her hand and she slipped away.

The way she skipped across the courtroom made it look like she hadn't been wavering earlier, but I saw her aura deflate inch by inch as she got closer, as if the only reason she'd started it up at all was to make me believe that her attitude had change for the better. I hadn't thought that it would. People don't bounce back so easily, especially not when you're continuously surrounded by the remnants of the errors that had hurt you in the first place.

I felt like watching the two of them was a breach of permission for how well we knew each other, but there wasn't much else to look at. Gumi approached the woman's chair. She was enclosed in the cage of her arms, holding herself and shuddering.

Gumi, for a moment, didn't seem to know what to do, then she found the simplest answer and wrapped her mother in a hug.

They both stammered there for a moment, the hold softening into each other's bodies as finally she relaxed and, to my astonishment, hugged Gumi back. She looked tiny, then, her stocky calves sticking out of her dress and awkwardly bent to keep her on the level of her mother, but her face was buried into her shoulder like she was hiding from something, a nightmare. Young again, even though, she'd never truly had that.

They'd given her a childhood and a life and now they were trying to take it from her, all because of something she didn't truly understand.

From that embrace, though, I could guess that she'd forgiven them.

Mrs Kamui shook with compressed, airtight sobs; the woman's mouth formed around a few whispered words that I almost assumed were comfort, then they both gradually pulled back. Gumi's hand slipped down and clutched at her mother's wrist, one last touch before she let go completely, stepped forwards with her eyes directly planted on the judge before the court, and said crisply, "I plead guilty to the first-degree murder of Gakupo Kamui."

The jury rustled like scattering birds, choking on her sudden release of the whole case. As did I. She touched at her skirt and swung her hips like all she was doing was asking someone to borrow some change, a sweet smile pulling at her lips.

I'd seen her enough times. That was the exact same smile as the one she'd given me when I'd bought her the dress, when I'd been fretting before the case, when she first met me and said, _"My name's Gumi, and can you help me, please? What? Oh, that's just blood, it doesn't wash out too well when I'm rushing."_

The twitch of muscle and heart that streamed into her image on a creek of codes and commands.

"I'll do whatever she says."

As Gumi gestured to her, I noticed Mrs Kamui was smiling, an uncomfortable twist on her mouth, but the rest of her face was stony and placid. Unruffled. Her tears were drying underneath her smudged eyes.

I shoved back my chair with a loud scrape.

Gumi looked over her shoulder at me, unintentionally tearing at me with those flat blue eyes. The smile was still tacked in place, her skin looking silken and soft. "Yuuma? It _is_ okay, right? I'm not disobeying any rules?"

I was surprised I didn't yell. "Did she tell you to say that, Gumi?"

The woman jolted slightly in her chair, staring at me with an expression as swirled as the contents of a blender, the edges slitting open deep wrinkles into her cheeks.

Gumi's smile widened an exact fraction._ ("You mean, 'Thank you'! Be professional!") _"Well, it's true, isn't it? Didn't I tell you that? I showed you. I killed him."

I lunged forwards a step, but she didn't even flinch. "You—yes, you did, but not intentionally—"

"It's okay. Mom's right." Her eyes widened in alarm. "Oh, oops! I mean, Mrs Kamui. Sorry!"

The woman's grimace slightly loosened to an attempted reassuring smile. I wouldn't have believed myself earlier if I had known I'd think this, but I wanted to cut it off of her face.

The walls between us tumbled down and the Megurine woman and the judge appeared, the former with a self-satisfied smirk.

A sharp guillotine crashed upon the judge's podium, cutting away my argument before it was even out, but I struggled to reform it and sew it back together well enough to shout over the judge, "If she was ordered to do that—she—she could have been ordered to kill him, she was—"

"Roro!" Gumi was laughing, a gentle repetition of three stoic notes that stood out to me more than ever. Her chest didn't tremor with her gasps. "It's okay! Really! I was sorry, wasn't I? This is my apology."

Megurine's slate eyes tried to catch mine, and when she noticed I wasn't about to let Gumi leave my focus, she simply said, "Regret is a human emotion, as you've consistently attempted to convince us, Mr Roriya. This isn't strange of her, remember?"

The gavel came down again with a sound like gates slamming, and the judge's voice rose with a Zeus-like roar above us all, but not above the blurring in my head.

Give her time. Give her jail. Don't kill her. Don't just destroy her.

"...sentenced to immediate termination of the program."

Like she was only an object.

I swore from the start she was real, her heart was capable of bruising and shattering and understanding and suffering and maybe loving.

But when she spun into the arms of the bailiff, she looked like all that was in her was ice and cold sparks.


End file.
